Syria: who can you trust in Manajir?

Though the Assad regime has been severely weakened in the north-eastern corner of Syria, the two main forces confronting it are also confronting each other. The People’s Protection Units (YPG, a Kurdish left-wing organisation) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (ISIS, a former al-Qaeda affiliate) have radically different ideas about what kind of system should replace the current regime — the YPG favours a decentralised secular democracy, ISIS an Islamic caliphate.

ISIS has virtually no support from the Kurds or the Christian minorities (Syriacs and Armenians) who support the YPG for their security even if not all of them share its ideology. ISIS has however been able to exploit opportunism among the Arab population, as well as an undercurrent of Sunni Arab chauvinism.

The roots of the current discord can be traced back to 1973, when President Hafez al-Assad began to settle Arab Bedouins in the areas bordering Iraq and Turkey. The project was designed to weaken the demographic dominance of the Kurds, and the Bedouins would also be brought more closely under central control.

Contrary to other parts of the country, the regime favoured the Sunni Arabs in the north-east, while the Kurds faced discrimination and oppression, which prevented them from developing any affinity for their Arab nationalist rulers. Meanwhile, the Syriacs were recognised as Arab Christians but not as a distinct ethnic group, laying the foundation for an ambivalent relationship with the regime.

The security agencies worked actively to whip up ethnic conflict at times, particularly during the unrest of March 2004, when Arabs were encouraged to attack the Kurds and their property in the cities of Qamishli and al-Hasakah.

These events form the backdrop to the current situation in the north-east. In 2012, the second year of the civil war, the YPG took control of most Kurdish-majority areas and announced their aim to keep out both anti-regime rebels and regime forces. Meanwhile the Arab-majority areas further west and south were captured by rebel groups, dominated by the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

The rebels received extensive support from Turkey, organised in part through Bedouin tribal leaders (whose authority had previously been challenged by the regime).

Proclaimed liberation resulted in little more than the opportunistic rule of gangs, however. And Kurds and Christians became the prime victims, as looting, evictions and kidnappings proliferated.

Fighting between the rebels and the YPG erupted in late 2012 in the ethnically and religiously diverse town of Ras al-Ayn on the Turkish border. All-out war followed in July 2013 when Jabhat al-Nusra broke the last truce. But despite frequent frontline assaults, and a campaign of car bombings, they were themselves forced on the retreat over the following months.

ISIS eventually emerged as the dominant force among the rebels in the north-east, who maintained a united front against the YPG, even as infighting erupted elsewhere in the country. Weary of the harsh rule of ISIS and its allies, local Arabs often welcomed the arrival of the YPG, and some even joined the organisation as fighters.

The attack on Manajir

The village of Manajir is located in a fertile agricultural area about 15 kilometres south-east of Ras al-Ayn. Until the mid-1970s, it had a Syriac Christian majority and Kurdish and Arab minorities. But after the best plots of land were re-distributed to settlers from the Baggara tribal confederation, most of the original inhabitants left the village.

As Syria descended into civil war, the Baggara leader Nawaf al-Bashir actively aided the rebels in this area from exile in Turkey. Foreign fighters arrived from all over the world and were joined by local Arabs as well as their fellow tribesmen from further south. Although they lost Manajir to the YPG in late 2013, they were not ready to admit defeat.

Early in the morning of 25 January 2014, a large truck approached the village. It was loaded with vegetables, but the driver was no merchant. A hidden explosive device was set off when he reached the checkpoint, killing three YPG fighters instantly, one of them Arab (and the charred and limbless remains of the driver landed 20 metres up the road).

Immediately there was an infantry attack from two directions, supported by T-55 tanks. Some of the attackers were already inside the village, having entered earlier under the cover of night and fog. ”It was treason,” said one of the YPG fighters. “Local people let them into the village and received them in their houses.” Ferocious house-to-house fighting followed, with shelling from the tanks. The tide turned after reinforcements arrived from the YPG and from their all-female counterpart, the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). One of the tanks was captured intact, while the YPJ destroyed another with a wire-guided missile. The fighting continued into the next day, when the last attackers were driven out or killed.

Almost unbelievably, the YPG and the YPJ didn’t suffer a single casualty after the initial explosion. A few fighters were wounded after they ran out of ammunition, but their comrades came to the rescue. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), ISIS and its allies lost 23 fighters.

Fear and protection

Four days later, life in the village returned to some semblance of normality — at least by Syrian standards. A new checkpoint was set up 50 metres up the road from the gaping hole that marks the spot of the old one. Around the corner, poverty-stricken women and men in traditional baggy clothes queue to buy bread.

Empty cartridges are piled up inside one of the wrecked buildings where a desperate struggle took place as the attackers took over the ground floor while the YPG fought back from the floor above. ”Don’t touch anything,” warned one of the YPG fighters, “There might be bombs left.” In the building opposite, a rigged explosive device was found behind a mattress.

On the outskirts of the village stands a small, simple house, which has clearly been ransacked for valuables, though there can’t have been much to find. On a bookshelf there are candles, icons and framed family photos. There’s still a pot of tea on the gas stove in the kitchen. This was the home of Rimon Ibrahim, the last Syriac Christian in the village and a YPG supporter.

While his family departed for the relative safety of al-Hasakah, Rimon had stayed to carry on working at the water pumping station. The round concrete structure once carried a promise of development for the inhabitants of Manajir: now its instruments stand silent and there is a pool of coagulated blood on the floor. ”First he was beheaded,” explained one of the YPG fighters, referring to Rimon. “Then they split open his skull and took out his brain.”

This gruesome murder was clearly meant as a message to others in the frontline villages. The YPG forces may have won their hearts and minds, but they can’t compete with ISIS’s ability to project terror. To counter the threat from fifth-columnists, the YPG needs open and active support from other villagers — and the fewer people that step forward, the more dangerous it becomes to do just that.

Most villagers are reluctant to talk about what happened in Manajir. “We don’t want to get involved in anything,” said one of the older women. But then a woman in her early 20s came up to the checkpoint, holding a newborn baby in her arms. Her house had been destroyed in the blast from the suicide truck bomb. The attackers “are bad people, doing bad things,” she said. “But the YPG never hurt us.”

Carl Drott

/B_note>

Carl Drott is a Swedish freelance journalist focusing on Kurdish-dominated areas of the Middle East.